This slideshow presentation discusses the definition of communities of practice citing real world examples. This was created for a graduate course in information instruction for informational professionals at San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science.
8. In order to contribute to improving the health and well-being of communities through the exchange of ideas, debate and analysis.
9. Their goal is to create a trustful relationship with the communities they serve by including the various populations with current information about legislation, research, and policy.
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11. DoIT provides and manages faculty and staff email, the tools to build webpages, web hosting, document sharing tools, and communication directories.
12. DoIT’s goal is to support the university mission by developing and promoting tools “to support communication, collaboration, information sharing, and project management”.
The terms Situated Learning and Communities of Practice may be new, but odd are, you have witnessed or participated in collective learning throughout your lives! Through Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's observations of apprenticeship, this theory of learning through practice and experience, mimicking the teacher, arose. Using our infograph depicted here, we will break down some CoPs that you may be familiar with, and further define a community of practice to give you a better understanding of what we are discussing.
Visualizing.org is a community of designers, educators, students, organizations and folks from the general public who come together to make sense of current issues through data and design. The members of this community of practice work to share knowledge of their data, facilitate a discussion and attempt to make sense of it all. By sharing and creating, they define what it is to be a community of practice through the ongoing goal of complex understanding of issues through design. Visualizing hosts various competitions and design marathons throughout the year to bring people, who have only interacted virtually, together. They share ideas and work on visual actualizing complex issues that affect the environment, education, agriculture, and the world.
Perhaps you are familiar with open office, linux, or mozilla? These were all created within the OSI community of practice. Although governed by a board, the OSI was founded by members of the computer science and programming community to provide free, redistributable applications to the public. They encourage their users, novices and experts alike, to use their products and make them better. The most fundamental principle of the OSI is what they call the “open source standard.” This standard ensures that any program or application created, adhere's to the philosophy and purpose of their organizations. Some of the guiding principles within this standard include free redistribution, no discrimination against any persons or group, maintaining the integrity of the authors work, and the license must be technology neutral. Members of this CoP work together to not only create source code for redistribution, but to advocate for free, collaborative, integrity driven programs and applications.
![Communities of Practice: Building an Understanding ,[object Object],[object Object]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/copslideshow-120226220503-phpapp02/85/Communities-of-Practice-Building-an-Understanding-1-320.jpg)
